Download Competing Explanations of Global Evils: Theodicy, Social Sciences

AGLOS: Journal of Area-Based Global Studies
AGLOS vol. 2 (2011): 27 – 45
ISSN 1884-8052
Copyright ©2011 Graduate School of Global Studies, Sophia University
http://www.info.sophia.ac.jp/gsgs
Competing Explanations of Global Evils:
Theodicy, Social Sciences, and Conspiracy
Theories
By Hugo Antonio Pérez Hernáiz
Abstract: When global tragedies occur (pandemics, economic crisis,
global warming, terrorism, etc), people will turn to three basic forms of
explanations. Some will turn to their priest for a theodicy account of the
event, others will turn to the sciences for a rational, secular account,
natural sciences in the case of natural disasters, and in the case of humanmade evils, the social sciences. Yet others will turn to conspiracy theories
to explain both natural and human evils—conspiracy theories that, like
science, claim to be rational and secular. In short, religion, science and
conspiracy theories are based on competing socially legitimate frames of
global evils, they share common ground: conspiracy theory and science
are both secular and appeal to reason and common sense knowledge,
conversely conspiracy theories appeal to notions of “faith” and “belief”
that pair them with forms of religious explanations. The strength of many
conspiracy theories stem not from their “fringe” and anti-mainstream
character, but from precisely those aspects of their narrative that appeal to
established and legitimate forms of explanations of events. In short,
conspiracy theories' narratives share a common secular rational frame
with narratives put forth by social scientific narratives of those same
events. This paper will describe how explanations based on different
frames compete in order to become the legitimate narrators of global evil
in society.
Keywords: Global Evils, Theodicy, Social Theory, Social Sciences,
Conspiracy Theories
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Introduction
Bad things happen and they happen on a global scale. The competencies
to explain and deal with these evils (terror, global warming, epidemic
outbreaks, world financial crisis, etc.) seem to transcend the power of
individual nation states. When evil things happen in a globalized world,
what are generally considered to be the socially legitimate explanations of
these evil events?
When global evil things happen, both natural and human made,
people will turn to three basic forms of explanations. Some will turn to
religion for a theodicy account of the event, or will turn to natural
sciences in the case of natural disasters for a rational account, or to social
sciences in the case of human made evils, also for a rational secular
account. Yet others will turn to conspiracy theories, to explain both
natural and human evils for accounts that, like science, claim to be
rational and secular.
A traditional religious narrative of an epidemic outbreak for
example, might tell us that it is a natural evil that has come to happen as
due punishment for our own human sins, making humans ultimately
guilty for the epidemic. But science, for its part, will search for the
rational, natural causes of the virus, map its genetic make up, decide
potential risks for humans, devise possible cures and vaccine, etc., all
without ascribing intent and ulterior responsibility of the event to any
agent, human or divine (or better still, as bracketing the possibility of
intent as just one of several working hypothesis). Other forms of
explanations, conspiracy theories for example, will also use rational
arguments for framing the same event but contrary to science, will ascribe
human agency and intent to what otherwise would be consider a natural
evil. For example, a human conspiratorial agent will be discovered as
“responsible” for the creation and dissemination of the virus. The agent
will ultimately, according to the conspiracy theory, benefit from the
global evil thus unleashed.
Conversely, where religious and conspiracy theory narratives both
may ascribe global evils to volitional agents (but different agents, with
different purposes, different methods, and for very different motives),
science might see only natural events. For example in the case of the
recent global financial crisis, a social scientist may explain the crisis as a
natural event that follows predictable cycles of a reified “economic
system”, even if explained in terms of innumerable human individual
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decisions, the result is an event of a “natural” order that can be objectified
and explained as a reality sui generis (Durkheim 1982). Conspiracy
theories, on the contrary, will stress the “unnaturalness” of the crisis and
will point to very concrete human agents that stand to benefit from it.1
Whereas social science may include motives of agents as only one
variable of an explanatory equation, conspiracy theories will exalt those
motives deterministically as central to their explanations. In doing so they
will appeal to a rational secular frame and claim that social science
explanations of the crisis are either naïve, themselves part of the
conspiracy or indeed, not scientific enough and failing to appropriately
use their own rational methods.
This last form of argumentation can be clearly seen in the
competing explanations of terrorist events as global evils. In a prominent
example, the scientific explanations of the events of 9/11 are challenged
by conspiracy theorists precisely for not being scientific and rational
enough and for forgetting to apply common sense knowledge to the
event.2 Conspiracy theories are devised that are very detailed in their use
of scientific language: aeronautics, structural engineering, pyrotechnics,
communication analysis, etc., and claim to be more scientific and rational
than the mainstream scientific explanations of the event. Furthermore,
conspiracy theories claim to make use of a superior form of common
sense knowledge by following the principle of who benefits from
producing the evil event. Thus, for example, common conspiracy theories
of the 9/11 events explain them in terms of its use as a casus belli
purposely created by the United States government in order to advance its
imperialist interests. On the other hand, the distinction between natural
and human evils is further blurred in terrorist events: they are obviously
caused by human agents, but they strike with the undifferentiated cruelty
of natural evils, killing both guilty and innocent.
Global warming and its effects, and in general what has been called
“global ecological catastrophes” (Beck 1999), are also narrated in very
different ways. A traditional religious explanation finds no problem
1
For a conspiracy account of the recent financial crisis see for example the following short articles
in selected conspiracy theory web pages: Richard C. Cook, “Is an International Financial
Conspiracy driving World Events?” in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=
8450; Robert Chapman, “Global Financial Crisis: Real Estate Market Bubble” in http://
www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=102&contentid=2367. Accessed August 15, 2010.
2
See for example http://www.911sharethetruth.com.
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coupling human hubris with divine punishment as a form of explaining
natural catastrophes such as earthquakes or storms. The agency of these
catastrophes however, when traced to human intervention in the form of
alterations to the ecosystem that may trigger them, becomes the object of
conflicting forms of explanations between conspiracy theories and sciences.
Again as in the previous cases, the narratives for these global evils devised
by conspiracy theories are staged in the same frame as those produced by
science, but diverging in notions of guilt, responsibility and intention.
In short, religion, science and conspiracy theories are based on
competing socially legitimate frames of narrations of global evils3, they
share common grounds: conspiracy theory and science are both secular
and appeal to reason and commonsense knowledge, conversely
conspiracy theories appeal to notions of “faith” and “belief” that pair
them with forms of religious explanations. The strength of many
conspiracy theories stems, not from their “fringe” and counter main
stream character, but from precisely those aspects of their narrative that
appeal to established and legitimate forms of explanations of events.
Conspiracy theories' narratives share a common secular rational frame
with narratives put forth by social scientific narratives of those same
events. It will be argued here that the perseverance of conspiracy theories
challenge scientific discourses in their own field precisely because both
share a common secular rational frame for explaining events.
Three competing forms of explanations for Global Evils
Theodicy
We deal with the classic problem of explanation of evil in the world
within the religious frame (theodicy4) when we face the attributes of the
divine as incongruous with the reality of the world: as omniscient, God
knows all evil; as omnibenevolent he wills all good, and as omnipotent he
is capable of precluding all evil. Therefore: how is Evil possible in the
world?5 Thus posed, the problem of evil is framed as a religious problem,
3
By socially legitimate narrative I refer to the notion of legitimacy put forth by social
constructionists such as Berger and Luckman (1966).
4
Theodicy, or defenses of God in the sense introduced by Leibniz ([1710] 1990).
5
In Ricoeur’s succinct formulation: “God is all powerful; infinitely good; evil exists.” (1986, 26).
The logical inconsistency of an all powerful and benevolent God with evil is first found in Epicurus.
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and its solution falls within the disciplinary fields of theology and
philosophy of religion. According to Weber, all world religions face the
problem of theodicy but, “The more the development tends towards the
conception of a transcendental unitary god who is universal, the more
there arises the problem of how the extraordinary power of such a god can
be reconciled with the imperfection of the world.” (Weber 1966, 138-39).
The problem was therefore posed by Weber as one of increasing
rationalization: an early and unintended consequence of inquiring for the
causes of evil and not accepting them passively. Classically exemplified
by Job’s experience in the Old Testament, a breach is made by which the
incongruity of omnipotence with evil has to be rationally explained. As
Morgan and Wilkinson comment, “The seeds of religious disenchantment
thus appear to have been sown by religion itself, from which the
rationalization of public realm emerged as a unintended consequence of a
metaphysical commitment to a particular idea of the supramundane”
(Morgan and Wilkinson 2001, 202).
Gradually, as human agency came to the forefront with
secularization, evil became a matter of individual morality. Consequently,
the humanities were asked to answer the question of evil in the world.
The theodicy question was secularized from its divine form (how is evil
possible given a good God?), to a humanist version (how is evil possible
given that humans are naturally good?). In this respect, the myths of the
bon sauvage, humanized from the medieval theme of nostalgia of a lost
paradise, where redeployed in order to assert the social corruption of the
natural kindness of humanity (Eliade 1989). The incongruity between
naturally good humans and social evils was explained by the corrupting
effect of social institutions.
Further rationalization later meant that human agency was
understood to be pressured, or even determined, by social structures. The
natural kindness of humans was further abstracted into the notion of
Reason. Thus the social sciences came to assume the exalted position of
holding the socially legitimate explanations of the causes of evil in the
world. Various authors have described this as the process of displacing of
the theodicy problem by its rationalized and secularized version,
sometimes referred to as a “sociodicy”. 6 The name implies that the
6
It is unclear who coined the term “sociodicy”. The earliest reference I have come across is in
Daniel Bell (1966). The term was also used by Vidich and Lyman in the introduction to their
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narrations that were once the domain of discourse related to religion are
now accounted for by the social sciences.7
Social Sciences
What is important here is that although we witness a change in the basic
cosmology for explaining the nature of evil in the social world, I consider
that the mythical nature of this cosmology remains the same: stories on
origins become rationalized, but they remain as basic myths on origins;
explanations of evil change focus, but they remain theodicies (in their
secularized form) in character; archetypal civilizing heroes become
human, but remain as exemplary models for society, etc. In a society
where the secular frame becomes the dominant one, these narrations
become increasingly rational, more human and less divine, it is to be
supposed that in this context the social sciences become accepted as in
charge of the socially legitimate narration of social myths.
Therefore, advancing further the argument made by Morgan and
Wilkinson and by other contemporary authors, we can characterize the
social sciences as the disciplines in charge of narrating, in normative form
the, now secularized and rationalized, problematic of global evil. These
narratives of the social sciences take the secularized form of descriptions
history of American Sociology to describe how “In the early decades of the twentieth century,
American sociology began to separate itself from its most visible religious orientations.
Substituting sociodicy—a vindication of the ways of society to man—to the theodicy that had
originally inspired them, American sociologists retained the original spirit of Protestant world
Salvation. They substituted a language of science for the rhetoric of religion.” (1985, 1). It was
also used by Bourdieu, for example, to characterize the neo-liberal explanation of suffering as
necessary for progress. Bourdieu thus labeled neo-liberalism a “conservative sociodicy” (Bourdieu
et al. 1993). In the 60s the term “anthropodicy” was proposed by Ernst Becker for a “secular
theodicy” based on a Comtean inspired vision of a morally relevant unitarian “science of man”
(Becker 1968).
7
Simon Locke has made a similar point in a recent article, further pointing to the parallel logical
characters of conspiracy theories and modern social sciences as secular responses to suffering:
Indeed [conspiracy theorizing] is an outcome of the same logic that produces the sciences of
general social analysis, which show the same tendencies to interpret reality in terms of
collective social processes often ultimately ascribed to the activities of one specific social
group – hence “they” are to blame. Conspiracy culture, then, is as “normal” a condition of the
modern world as are these sciences, a world in which the modes of mundane moral reasoning
are shaped by a godless spirit that will nonetheless seek out a prospective pathway to
salvation. God, supposedly, no longer offers a satisfactory path, while that to disenchanted
nature is a hard road to travel. (2009, 582-3)
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of unjust and irrational social arrangements against just and rational social
possibilities; social phenomena, such as crime, inequality, poverty, vices,
violence etc. (Bourdieu 1993), described as social problems (Stivers
1991), and particularly the survival of the enlightened humanist narrative
of the bon sauvage in its rationalized expression of the exploited poor, the
marginalized, the proletariat, the third world revolutionary or the
immigrant worker to the first world, and still in its original form as the
pre-modern, “natural”, indigenous in remote areas of the world.
Furthermore, contemporary society is characterized as dealing with evil in
terms of managing risks, in many instances they are produced as
unintended consequences of modernity itself (Giddens 1990; Beck 1992).
Finally, society itself becomes the causal locus of evil for social sciences
in, for example, narrations of the repression of society upon the individual
(Marcuse 1966), or of totalitarian societies (Arendt 1971). In its structure
of narration of evils the modern rationalization retains the paradox of
theodicy: how is evil possible? In classical sociological theory it is
characterized as a type of hubris, as a price humans pay or as an
“unintended consequence” of modernity that still resonates in
contemporary sociology.8
As a further step in the process of rationalization of the explanations
of evil, the social sciences, historically tied to the emergence of the nation
state, acquire a post-national character, and aspire both to become global
and to explain social phenomena beyond the boundaries of national
settings. Thus, we witness the emergence of disciplines of global social
sciences that deal with the explanation of these events. Social sciences
prefixed by “global” would ascribe to the guiding myths of national social
sciences but in terms of progress and a better (global) society. They would
8
such as for example as described by Ulrich Beck:
The approach to knowledge in reflexive modernization can be summarized, greatly
oversimplified, as follows:
1.
The more modern society becomes, the more knowledge it creates about its
foundation, structures, dynamics and conflicts.
2.
The more knowledge it has available about itself and the more it applies this, the
more emphatically a traditionally defined constellation of action within structures
is broken up and replaced by a knowledge-dependent, scientifically mediated
global reconstruction and restructuring of social structures and institutions.
3.
Knowledge forces decisions and opens up contexts for action. Individuals are
released from structures, and they must redefine their context of action under
conditions of constructed insecurity in forms and strategies of “reflected”
modernization. (Beck 1999, 110)
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depart from the nation state centered social sciences in their explanations
of national or local evil, with the emergence of “globalization” as a
structural process that is understood as either the cause of evil (as a
neoliberal homogenizing ideology), or as the next step in a rationalizing
world trend whose preclusion would be the origin of evil. More or less
optimistic conceptions of globalization and pessimistic anti-globalization
can be thus placed in a continuum of interpretation, with a few social
scientists denying forthright the existence of the phenomenon of
globalization per se (Rosenberg 2005), but most disagreeing mainly in its
positive or negative effects for the social.9
Conspiracy Theories
However, as argued here, the social sciences do not hold the
contemporary monopoly of being the legitimate social narrators of global
evils. Several students have pointed out that conspiracy explanations of
social events have increased in popularity in recent years (Parish and
Parker 2001). The bestseller status of literary fictions and films that deal
with conspiracies are presented as confirmations of this fact. The Internet
is often mentioned as an especially adequate vehicle for the transmission
of these theories.10
Much of the early sociological literature on the subject, such as
Georg Simmel, dealt not with conspiracy theories, but with conspiracies
themselves. 11 The emphasis was in the sociological analysis of the
secretive aspects and internal functioning of conspiracy cabals and secret
groups. Later literature has acknowledged that there is little point in
denying the fact that people conspire, that is, they participate in political
9
According to David Held and Anthony McGrew the globalization/anti globalization divide is
mainly normative in character: “Since all explanatory theories if globalization are implicitly, if not
explicitly, normative, disagreement about its essential nature is, in part at least, often rooted in
different ethical outlooks. Indeed the most contentious aspect of the study of contemporary
globalization concerns the ethical and the political: whether it hinders or assists the pursuit of a
better world and whether that better world should be defined by cosmopolitan or communitarian
principles, or both.” (Held and McGrew 2007, 173).
10
For recent counts of Conspiracy Theories see: Patán (2006). A serious compilation, despite its
popular format presentation, with excellent biographical and Internet sources is McConnachie and
Tudge (2005). Older, dated but still useful accounts are Anton Wilson (1998) and Vankin and
Whalen (1999).
11
The classical sociological study of conspiracies and conspiracy groups (not of conspiracy
theories) is the chapter on “The Secret Society” in Simmel’s Sociology (1950).
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actions in which they “breath the same air” of a plot. In a certain sense, as
most authors reviewed in the following pages admit, conspiracies are part
of social life: they are everywhere.12
Furthermore, in everyday life, every time we meet with a person
because we want to reach a certain goal, and we think that the other person
may either share that goal or help us achieve it, but we exclude a third
person from our meeting because we consider this third person could
jeopardize the plan, we are conspiring. Everyday experiences are full of
such events, and they do not necessarily entail negative connotations. The
consequences of a conspiracy can be positive (arguably, most conspirators
are convinced of the positive consequences of their actions); we can
conspire to surprise a friend with a party, for purposes of beneficence and
charity, or to further a political position we consider correct.
We might also conspire to commit an unlawful or evil act, and
much legislation contemplates provisions against conspiracies to commit
crimes. Serious crimes are usually described as acts of mental and moral
weakness, as the products of elaborate plots, or both. Much of the police
story literary genre relies on the latter type of description; There is a
crime, usually in a set location, and there is a detective who follows the
signs left by the perpetrator, in the forms of clues, that lead him to unravel
the plot, and thus, to the criminal. The criminal is a conspirator, although
in many cases he may act alone and not co-nspire with anyone. In both
cases, the relatively benign party organizers of the previous paragraph in
one extreme, and the criminal on the other, represent micro and common
forms of conspiracy: a limited plot for a limited end. Once the end is
achieved, the conspiracy stops, although in the case of the criminal a
further, greater plot may develop in order to cover up his crime.
However, social life may present us with far greater instances of
conspiracies: groups that try to impose their objectives through obscure
and hidden mechanisms. They are portrayed in popular imagination and
in literary fiction as meeting in shadowy places, away from the public
light and, through procedures that are fundamentally undemocratic and
secret, deciding upon the destiny of other people and imposing great evil
12
As Hofstadter, one of the most often quoted authors on the matter, pointed out: “One may object
that there are conspiratorial acts in history, and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them.
This is true. All political behavior requires strategy, and anything that is secret may be described,
often with but little exaggeration, as conspiratorial.” (Hofstadter 1965, 29).
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upon society. Sometimes they represent unimportant and irrelevant groups
that can only reach their objectives through an infinite chain of plots over
plots. But more often they are groups with almost supernatural powers
over infinite human and material resources.
We are thus faced with the assumption that conspiracies are everpresent in social life and that they are behind much of the evil that afflicts
society, but that there are many levels of conspiracies that follow a
continuum, from limited and relatively innocuous plots, with reduced
objectives and consequences, to world domination conspiracies.13 The
term “conspiracy theories” will be used here to define explanations of
global evils that tend to the latter end of the continuum.
The most often cited analysis of these types of conspiracy theories
is Karl Popper’s. His main argument will be briefly recounted here. In
The Open Society and its Enemies, Popper describes
a theory which is widely held but which assumes what I consider the very
opposite of the true aim of the social science; I call it the ‘conspiracy
theory of society’. It is the view that an explanation of a social
phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are
interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden
interest which has first to be revealed), and who have planned and
conspired to bring it about. (Popper 1995, 324)
For Popper, conspiracy theories are simply wrong interpretations of
reality, often used in social sciences they are however, contrary to
scientific aims. Conspiracy theories derive from Historicism, putting
causes of social phenomena beyond the human realm; they are the
consequences of a secularization of the religious belief that gods play
with social life. The result of these types of explanations is that people
cease to be agents of their own history, and instead become pawns of
either other people or abstract structures.
As mentioned above, there is the common assertion that even as
“overarching conspiracy theories are wrong [this] does not mean they are
not on to something” (Fenster 1999, 67), but also that by using the term
“conspiracy theory” as a disqualifying argument we may be actually
13
Räikkä (2009, 186) distinguishes between non-public conspiracy from public conspiracy
theories. Kelley (2003, 106) refers to “truly vast” conspiracy theories for the latter part of the
continuum.
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playing into the hands of “manufactures of consent” (the real agents of evil)
that preclude certain forms of criticism. Thus Mark Fenster argues for
example, in the introduction to his book, that in “political discussions with
friends and opponents, one can hurl no greater insult than to describe
another’s position as the product of a ‘conspiracy theory’.” (Fenster 1999,
xi). To be sure, as has been argued by Bell and Bennion-Nixon (2001),
much academic critical discourse has more than just a ring of conspiracy
theory to it, but many academics feel their work is unfairly labeled.14
Here it is important to note that, in fact, many critiques of society,
from the left and the right, rely heavily on the notion that hidden groups
or abstract structures, beyond the actor’s control, are behind most evils.
The purpose of these types of critiques is to “reveal” hidden truths
through the study of discourse as expressions of meaning hidden between
lines, and/or the institutional analysis of how structures of decisionmaking are penetrated by more or less hidden interest groups. These
critiques can be academically sophisticated, and furthermore, they may be
right in many of their assertions or not. However, the fact that they search
for abstract explanations of social reality does not turn them into
conspiracy theories in themselves, although they may be used in
politically simplified versions, as the basis for many conspiracy theories.
We are here faced with cases in which science and conspiracy theories,
because they claim the same rational secular frame, produce similar
narratives of social evils.
Furthermore, an infinite spiral of mutual accusations of conspiracy
theorizing is often presented, in the literature on the subject, as a result of
certain political uses of conspiracy theories. In another section of the
paper quoted above, Pigden presents this problem as an inappropriate use
of Occam’s razor: for Pigden, the simplest explanation is not always the
best, as he implies, is argued by Popper, particularly when we deal with
social phenomena. The common political use of conspiracy theory these
authors are arguing against is typically seen when a political actor
dismisses as a conspiracy theory, for example, accusations of acting
according to vested interests. The political actor may appeal to a simpler
explanation of the facts versus a convoluted and complex conspiracy
14
A good example of this preoccupation is a comment in a critique of Popper by Charles Pigden
(1995): “Like many on the left, I think Popper’s critique of conspiracy theories has provided rightwing conspirators (and, in some cases, their agents) with an intellectually respectable smokescreen
behind which they can conceal their conspiratorial machinations.”
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theory explanation of the same facts. This is quite different from the
political actor claiming a conspiracy behind the accusations, and therefore
appealing to a “more complicated” explanation of the facts. In both cases
there is a notion of “degrees of complexity” of knowledge constructions
as reflections of a “simple” or “complex” social phenomenon. These
notions of complexity are the results of conceptions of how institutions
work, especially with respect to the decision-making processes and the
internal functioning of these institutions.
A close reading of Popper reveals that he understood conspiracy
theories not as knowledge constructions that reflect notions of a complex
social reality, but in fact as a reflection of a simplistic conception of
institutional functioning. Conspiracy theories are knowledge
constructions that claim a simple social reality of cause and effect guided
by a complex plot, which is something very different from claiming that
social reality is complex. Conspiracy theories pretend to reveal a simple
reality made complex by conspirators, and politically they often long for a
utopian political world in which nothing will be concealed; the perfect
open political system in which everything is transparent, a world of
perfect sincerity as well as perfect correspondence between good motives
and their always positive consequences. In their most extreme cases,
conspiracy theories long for an a-political utopia because political
responsibility and sincerity is for them, and oxymoron.
Furthermore, Popper clearly argued, as insisted here, that he was
not negating the existence of conspiracies in society. He did argue,
however, that conspiracies very rarely achieve their stated ends. But,
some critics could rightly retort that some conspiracies do achieve their
ends, and the discussion could be collapsed into comparing successful
and unsuccessful conspiracies, which was not Popper’s intention. The
important point is to stress that social action has unintended consequences
and that conspiracy theorists have a hard time dealing with the notion of
unintended consequences of actions.
In short, according to Popper, for the conspiracy theorist, if a
consequence can be traced through a plot, to motives of the actors, then
there is no room for the unexpected. Conversely, social reality becomes a
mere symptom of an intentional plot that needs to be read. This simple
explanation may work well for small limited conspiracies, but Popper
would argue that it does not constitute a viable way for explaining
broader social phenomena. In this line, Dieter Groh, for example, has
argued that conspiracy theorists underestimate “the complexity and
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dynamics of historical processes” and points that they “ascribe in a linear
manner the results of actions to certain intentions” (Groh 1987, 11).
The conspiracy theorist can describe the discovery of this code as a
moment of illumination. It allows him to follow back the sequence of
events, from the everyday facts that would otherwise remain random and
unexplained to the motives of the conspirator. As in classical police
fiction, once the motives for the crime have been revealed, the crime is
half solved. He who had motives to commit a murder, is the murderer. It
is only left for the detective to reconstruct the logical sequence of events
that lead from the crime to the criminal. Explanations based on this type
of logic do not pose a complex social and political reality; on the contrary
they greatly simplify reality as the product of intentionally driven, monocausal linear events.
Therefore, given the complexity of social reality and global events
as well as the unintended consequences of social action, it was not
Popper’s intention to counter conspiracy theories of how society works
with a “theory of the innocence” of political actors. Again, it is important
to state that a study of conspiracy theories should not hold that society is
devoid of actors with diverse and often conflicting interests who act in
order to advance those interests.15 However, even if conspiracies exist and
are part of social life, and even when conspiracy theories and social
sciences are couched on the same secular rational frame, differences
persist between a conspiracy theory approach and a scientific approach to
the explanation of global evils. More precisely, despite the superficial
similarities between the rational and secular appeals made both by social
sciences and conspiracy theories—similarities that make conspiracy
theories a powerful alternative to social scientific explanations of global
15
Räikkä provides several famous examples of events that were once dismissed as conspiracy theories:
In 1941 a belief in the Holocaust was a belief in some sort of conspiracy theory, as it denied
the official claim that the Jews were merely being resettled. But now, Holocaust denial is a
crime in some countries, for instance in the UK, and the belief in the Holocaust is certainly
not called a conspiracy theory. The theory that revealed that President Nixon was indirectly
involved in the Watergate burglary was also once a conspiracy theory, but now it is part of the
official explanation of the White House tragedy in 1972. People who claimed that President
Reagan sold guns to Iran in order to fund right-wing Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua were
conspiracy theorists in 1986, but people who make the same claim now are just repeating
something that everybody knows.” (2009, 187)
To these it is illustrative to add the Dreyfus affair as an example of a vast conspiracy that was
successful for some time, until the conspiracy theorists Dreyfusards were finally able to reveal its
existence (Johnson 1966).
Hugo Antonio Pérez Hernáiz
39
AGLOS: Journal of Area-Based Global Studies
evils, there are also important divergences as to how claims to rationality
and common sense are made by the two competing narratives.
The social scientist, according to Popper, holds that society and
therefore political action, is the outcome of a complex and multivariate
web of relations and not the sole outcome of a purposeful mono-causal
chain of events. Especially when dealing with political action, the social
scientist knows of unexpected consequences of such actions and is willing
to include such consequences in his explanations. Therefore, he may
accept the existence of conspiracies as part of the explanation of certain
events, but deals with them as only one of many variables determining
those events. Furthermore, social scientists present (or at least attempt to
present) their theories as falsifiable. That is, their theories are subject to
replication and therefore may be proven wrong by other scientists. The
fact that they may be wrong is not taken as further proof of a totalistic
attempt to hide the truth by the conspirators. Granted, this is a very
optimistic assessment of social sciences, but it is one that most would
recognize as their methodological utopian goal.
Contemporary conspiracy theories are, like social sciences
narrations of events within the secular rational frame but, contrary to
social sciences, they state that every single event in social life can be
explained as the product of an obscure political machination by certain
groups of actors. They do not deny the complexity of social life, but for
them, that complexity is possible only inside the linear conspiracy plot
that can, in effect, become extraordinarily complicated in its effects. As
Umberto Eco (1992) has stated, conspiracy theorists fall victims to their
own over-interpretative plots and create self-sustainable complexities that
lead to new interpretation in an infinite irresolvable chain. This
“complexity” is what makes for the thrilling character of most conspiracy
fiction. But, as in fiction, this complexity is rather illusory and becomes a
very simple sequence of interconnected events once the conspiracy code
has been unveiled.
Conclusions
The following table summarizes the argument made in the previous
paragraphs. Read from left to right the graph represents the modernization
argument of a progressive rationalization in terms of the transit from a
dominant religious frame for narrating evils to a secular frame. In the
40
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AGLOS: Journal of Area-Based Global Studies
boxes are the dominant cosmogonies (in cursive), the prevailing
explanations of evils, and in bold, disciplines of knowledge.
Religious Frame
Secular Frame
Myth of
Origin /
Explanatio
ns of Evil
Lost Paradise.
Fall from Divine
Grace. Demon as
corruptor.
Redemption as
return to
God/Paradise.
The bon savage.
Humans as
naturally good.
Fall from the
state of nature.
Society as
corruptor.
Redemption as
return to nature.
The downtrodden of the
world. No fall, but in its
place myth of progress to
more rational
arrangements in society.
Place of corruptor
assumed by irrational
obstacles to this
progress. Redemption by
rational overcoming of
these obstacles.
The downtrodden of the
world. No fall, progress
as globalization.
Globalization as evil or
good, depending on
standpoint. Redemption
by globalizing or by
resisting globalization.
Legitimate
narrator
of evil.
Theodicy.
Religion.
Theodicy.
Humanities.
Sociodicy. Social
Sciences.
Sociodicy. Conspiracy
theories. “Global”
social sciences.
As can be seen in the last box closest to the secular frame, the
argument presented here challenges traditional accounts of modernization
as the triumph of rational secular forms of explanation. Even as it
acknowledges that triumph, it contends that science is not the only socially
legitimate narrative within that frame. I argue here that the secular rational
frame allows for more narratives than modern science. The narrative
presented here fits into the world society argument made by Meyer and his
colleagues. Meyer has explained in his work that globalization includes
several dimensions; apart from the increasing political, military and
economic interdependence between sovereign nation states, this also means
the “expanded interdependence of expressive culture through intensified
global communication” and “the expanded flow of instrumental culture
around the world” (Meyer 2002, 233).
This increase and expansion of interdependence has an impact on
the legitimacy we ascribe to the myths that explain society and its evils.
Thus, even if world society “is stateless and lacks much of a collective
actor [it] contains much cultural and associational material that defines
itself as made up principally of very strong and highly legitimated actors.
These arise from a rationalized (scientific) analysis of nature as universal
and lawful and thus suited to rational and purposive action” (Meyer 2002,
237). Furthermore he adds that actors:
arise even more from a secularized analysis of a universal and lawful
moral or spiritual authority: the high god no longer acts in history but
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AGLOS: Journal of Area-Based Global Studies
sacralized human actors do, carrying legitimated agency for their own
actions under valid and universal collective principles. (Meyer 2002, 237)
These actors described by Meyer have organizational expression not
only in modern institutions, but also in culture and in social scientific
theories that describe their life, their sufferings and their evils, within the
secular rational frame. The secular rational frame (both as scientific and
conspiracy theories narratives), contrary to the religious frame, which has
a collective character, is centered on the individual actor. According to
Meyer, individual actors become in modern society almost “little gods”;
rights, policies and agency are legitimated as ascriptions to individual
actors and not groups. Globalization, as increasing interdependence and
convergence of institutions is part of the long secularizing process that
stresses this condition of a world of individuals that act as such and not as
members of collectives.
The dominant frame for explaining evil in a globalizing world is
secular, rational and individualistic. Its main rhetoric expression is the
discourse of science. Through a process described by Meyer, especially in
the realm of education, globalization has meant the increasing legitimacy
of science as the accepted explanation for events. However, as is argued
here, science is but one discursive expression of a broader rational secular
frame, but it is not the only discursive expression of that frame:
conspiracy theories also claim to be legitimately considered as rational
secular arguments for the explanation of evils. Furthermore they claim an
agency that sometimes runs contrary to the dominant individualistic
agency. Most conspiracy theories ascribe a collective agency to those
responsible for the evils of the world, but at the same time vindicate the
figure of the lonely individual researcher who works alone in revealing
those evils and their perpetrators.
Modern globalized society has a way of explaining evil events that
reflects its cosmogonic narrative. Explanations that appeal to reason,
individualistic values, and responsible agents have more social legitimacy
than those that appeal to divine will. The legitimacy warranted by these
cosmogonic values does not necessarily mean that scientific explanations
of events are readily accepted as legitimate explanations for these events.
Conspiracy theory narratives often compete with science and they are
often successful in claiming to be the real representatives of the rational
frame of explanation.
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—————
Hugo Antonio Pérez Hernáiz is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Program
in Global Studies at Sophia University, Japan. He holds an M.A. degree in
global studies from the same program and an M.A. in sociology from the
University of Miami. He is a sociologist (licenciado en Sociología) form
the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Caracas, Venezuela, and currently
teaches social theory at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and media
theories at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.
Hugo Antonio Pérez Hernáiz
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